Dr Ashok Seth is giving old and frail new lease of life
New Delhi: Perish the thought of walking; she would gasp even in eating.
Weighing bare 42 kg, 82 year old Chandigarh woman has come a long way in just 3 days after undergoing procedure named TAVR (Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement) in Fortis Escorts hospital last week.
But for TAVR, she would have been dumped for waiting death. She felt like having new leg for active life. Her relatives who watched her breathing hard even while eating were pleasantly surprised to see her walking with ease in the hospital corridor.
Talking to Medicare News on the occasion of World Heart Day , Dr. Ashok Seth, the pioneer of TAVR in India and Chairman, Fortis Escort Heart Institute, said,‘ Old and infirm cannot endure the traditional surgical method opening chest for this valve treatment. For such patients TAVR has come as a godsend. This method is a leap of faith of sorts for aged patients. She is overjoyed thinking that she would have good more years in the midst of her caring family’
Dr Seth, who has recently been awarded the tag of ‘Master Interventionalist’ in USA, has given new lease of life to hundreds of valve patients aged more than 80 years of age. They have been virtually pulled out from the jaws of death by this minimally invasive method and are living normal life even beyond 90. They are happy witnessing and enjoying the marriage of their great grand sons and daughters.
Aged heart patients are lined up to Escort Fortis hospital to undergo this so simple and benign procedure. Dr Seth, an authority of Angioplasty and TAVR in India, says, ‘Outcome of TVR is just like that of angioplasty. We send the patient in just three or four days.’
Cardiac patients of this age are advised against gruelling open heart surgery because one, it is risky and two, it is regarded as harshness perpetrated on old people whose days might be numbered.
The procedure is done under local Anaesthesia from the groin area like any other angiography procedure. This valve condition is called Aortic stenosis . It is the abnormal narrowing of the aortic valve of the heart which restricts the blood flow to the whole body. It is one of the most common and most serious valve diseases.
